Limbo by A. Manette Ansay

children, plus a hired man named Irwin. Summers, Irwinpreferred the barn to his room in the house, and, at night, my mother and her sisters watched him from an upstairs window, following the glow of his cigarette as he passed in front of the open barn door. He liked to go out for a drink once in a while. He put ketchup on everything, from eggs to bread. His cigarette butt smoking on a nearby saucer. His cough like a private language.
    â€œBut when was his birthday?” I asked my mother, pressing for more, always more. Irwin had died of emphysema the year before I was born.
    â€œI don’t know,” my mother said, but I wouldn’t accept this, couldn’t. At ten, I still believed my mother knew everything. It was a belief I’d cherished, protected, long after I’d stalked and killed the Easter bunny, the tooth fairy, Saint Nicholas.
    â€œWhat was his favorite color?” I demanded. “What was his middle name?”
    â€œI’ve already told you everything I know,” my mother said, evenly. “Sweetheart, he’s been dead for over ten years.”
    One day, I begged her to make up the answers, and when she refused, I stomped up the stairs to my room and slammed the door so hard that the framed needlepoints fell off the wall. I’d always assumed that every question, large or small, would have its corresponding answer. But Irwin was, and would remain, an open-ended question, a mystery my mother refused to illuminate with a lie. Lying was a sin.Telling stories that weren’t true, even if everybody knew they weren’t true, was the same thing, only said differently. There was right and there was wrong. There was good and there was bad. Mine was a world of black and white; there was nothing in between.
    I believe there is a relationship, much like that between parent and child, between the physical, or external, landscape we call home and the spiritual, or internal, landscape that becomes the human soul. I was the offspring of manicured lawns, of perfectly rectangular ranch houses laid out on perfectly rectangular lots, of streets that met at right angles. Following directions, there was never any question which way was left, which way right, which way straight ahead. The roads leading out of town parted the flat fields neatly, cutting more rectangles, precise as stained glass: gold and green in the summertime; white and dun in winter, black when the land was freshly cultivated, speckled with seagulls like smooth, gray stones. Lake Michigan edged the horizon like the bright, blue border on a quilt. A place for everything; everything in its place , I was told, and the landscape bore witness to those words. You could see the truth of it laid out for miles. Faith was clean-cut as a corn row or a fence line, direct as a county highway. God was the hawk, high overhead, overlooking us all. We were the rabbits, trying to blend in, trying not to draw attention to ourselves.
    This is just the way things are. If you don’t like it, take it up with God .
    Summers, restless, I’d get on my bike and ride out of town as far as I could. After an hour or so, I’d coast to a stop and wait for the lake breeze to cool me. Around me, the fields would be planted in soybeans, field corn and sweet corn, oats, wheat. In the distance there’d be a little white farmhouse beside a red barn, a windmill in the courtyard slowly turning. Perhaps I’d see a herd of Holsteins taking their shade beneath a single stand of hickory trees. A frenzy of black-eyed susans in the run-off ditches. An orange housecat, bright as a button, stalking something in the weeds. After catching my breath, I’d get back on my bike and, again, I’d ride and ride until my hot breath burned my upper lip and the pavement seemed to rise and fall with each pump of my knees. At last, I’d coast to a stop, look around…
    â€¦and the fields would be planted in soybeans, field corn and sweet corn, oats,